The Internet may be viewed as containing distributed information and centralized information. The distributed information is located throughout the Internet and typically takes the form of domain name servers, IP addresses, and email addresses, for instance. The centralized information is content, such as web pages and files, which is stored on and served by central servers.
Gaining access to such centralized content, however, is becoming increasingly difficult due to growing Internet congestion, limited bandwidth, and increasing file sizes, especially for media rich content. Traditional Internet technologies for distributing content, such as e-mail, streaming media, and FTP, have proven inadequate. E-mail is inadequate because due to the number of email messages and attachments passing through email servers, restrictions are placed on the sizes of emails that restricts what can be sent as attachments. E-mail also has security issues. PGP encryption is available for securing e-mails, but is not widely adopted.
Streaming media has the disadvantages of not working with all file types and is expensive because providers must purchase different software for the various streaming media standards. Streaming media also has not proven to be a reliable transfer method. And FTP file transfers also has disadvantages, which include being technically challenging to most users, and suffering from inefficient transfers. There are other solutions for distributing content, but they are usually proprietary and do not scale well.
Another problem with distributing centralized content is cost. As file sizes increase, the distribution of content is becoming increasingly expensive for content providers due to metered pricing of used bandwidth. In metered pricing, a content provider's Internet-Service-Provider (ISP) monitors the output of the servers used to provide the content, and charges the content provider 95% of the peak usage even though the average output is much lower. Thus, the cost of distributing content from central servers is one reason why attempts have been made to decentralize content.
One way to decentralize content is through peer-to-peer networks. Peer-to-peer network computing is a more efficient means for distributing resources and content over the Internet. In a peer-to-peer network, all workstations and computers in the network may act as servers to all other users on the network. Some peer applications gain efficiencies by aggregating the distributed storage capacity of the computers across the network, such as Napster™ and Gnutella™, or aggregating the idle computing cycles of the computers, such as SETI@home™. Still others, such as instant messaging, take advantage of the direct network connections that peer devices can make to enhance communications.
Although peer networks are effective, current peer networks have disadvantages. With Napster for example, file downloads are unreliable, resulting in broken connections and incompletely delivered files. In addition, users cannot authenticate other users. There are other problems inherent with such networks, such the inability to serve files from nodes protected by firewalls to other nodes in the network. Firewalls allow computers behind the firewall to send messages to computers on the Internet, but block incoming messages from reaching the computers behind the firewall. In peer-to-peer networks that have many local area networks protected by firewalls, the amount of file sharing over the peer-to-peer can be greatly reduced.
Accordingly, what is needed is a peer network that facilitates file access to firewall-protected nodes. The present invention addresses such needs.